


Left Holding the Bag, Part II

by gardnerhill



Series: Cats and Dogs Living Together [6]
Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Universe - Animals, Alternate Universe - Cats, Alternate Universe - Dogs, Animal Abuse, Cat Sherlock Holmes, Cats, Community: watsons_woes, Dog John, Dogs, Gen, Prompt Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-13
Updated: 2017-07-13
Packaged: 2018-12-01 23:06:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,522
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11496663
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gardnerhill/pseuds/gardnerhill
Summary: The pups are fed.





	Left Holding the Bag, Part II

**Author's Note:**

> For the 2017 July Watson's Woes Promptfest prompt #13, a return of the 2012 **Puppy Picture** :  
> 
> 
>  **Warning:** Aftermath of animal cruelty. Not a happy puppy story.

Meg turned out to be a queen cat lying in a milk crate, who hissed and laid back her ears at the sight of me. I wanted to growl but my mouth was full of a dirty starved pup’s scruff – and Meg didn’t bolt because she had four tiny kittens attached to her teats. We were saved by the girl pup squirming in my grip at the smell of milk and saying “Hungry” in such a plaintive tone that my fur unhackled and Meg’s ears straightened. “Aw right, bring ‘er here,” she said wearily, kneading at a pair of engorged teats that were currently unoccupied by kittens.

Shock, staggering behind me with the weight of the pup he bore in his own mouth – the little lad was still bigger than a month-old kitten – only looked triumphant and smug as he laid down his burden and nudged the runt toward the reclining cat. I hobbled over awkwardly on my one foreleg and lowered the bigger girl beside her brother. The four kittens barely moved as the pups joined them.

Meg made a face at the stink, but at the grunting and sucking noises coming from the newcomers she lay back with the resigned air of a mother. “Poor little brats. One of those mis-littered dog-fighters do this?”

“Yes,” I replied, feeling a little humiliated at both cats’ obvious knowledge of the ways of street life to which I was still ignorant. “We found them in a skip. These two were the only survivors.”

“We plan to track down the culprits,” Shock replied. His tail lay curled tight around all his four feet instead of waving in anger. I was finally starting to understand the way my cat partner thought; he didn’t waste time by being kind, but now that the pups were being fed he could direct his attention to preventing more abandoned pups like them, from at least a few guilty humans. “I need to go off and think of everything I smelled on the pups, and decide how to find the men responsible and how to stop them. The dog will be happy to stay and feed you while you nurse.”

My ears and tail went up in reflexive anger at being pressed into service without my say-so – but then I saw the two wagging tails amid the kittens at Meg’s belly, and realised that Shock was right. If I was to be responsible for the little lives we’d rescued, and if I wanted to thank Meg for saving them, I’d have to keep the mother well fed so she could do the same for the babies.

“I’m going back to our alley, Army dog,” Shock continued. “Stay here. Stay.” I felt myself go rigid, my feet rooting in the ground, going stock-still. That rat of a cat wasn’t above using my own training by humans to make me obey _him_. “I’ve gotten what I need from the children. You can clean them up now if you like. I’ll let you know when you can come back.” And he was gone in a flash.

Relieved, I leaned over to give the pups a good swipe with my tongue to wash away the stink of death they still carried – and jerked back with a yelp and a scratched nose. Meg glared at me, her claws sliding back into her upper forepaw. “Oi! Stay away from my kids, three-legs.”

I wanted to snarl that I wasn’t going to hurt her stupid kittens… and stayed silent, teeth locked behind my closed mouth. There were plenty of dogs I’d run into out here who wouldn’t think twice about worrying the entire litter just for fun, and she didn’t know who I was other than a dog-breed that normally hated cats. I dropped my nose and my tail (it still hurt to do this to a cat) and backed away. Keep them fed; keep them safe. “How does fish sound?”

“Ooh, I’d kill for a tuna tin right now,” Meg said. “Oi! Dog! The skips are that way!”

I kept hop-hobbling away – not toward the skips in Meg’s alley but in the opposite direction.

At the dock the fish-catchers were in full cry at the booths. One laughed. “Hey, it’s Pegleg! Got a couple of day-olds for ya, and that cat-pal o’ yours!” And he tossed a pair of herrings toward me – smelling splendid with the faint odor of beginning decay that made them uneatable for humans. I happily scooped them up by the tails and hobbled away again. After the death and filth clinging to those poor pups, the stink of tasty fish was a relief.

And it was a treat to see Meg’s gape of disbelief when I presented her not with a tin bearing a few scraps of oily tuna but a whole fish. I devoured my own and heard her own eager eating sounds, while kits and pups fed gluttonously too. “Dog,” Meg said much later over a bared fish skeleton, and belched. “You’re all right.”

#

“Mum’s gone?” the girl asked.

I gave her little brother another swipe with my tongue, which didn’t even wake him; finally both of them smelled like living pups. “You were taken away from your mum by the people that have her. Your mum doesn’t know where you are.” _She thinks you’re dead, like all the rest of the litter…_ I said nothing of that. “Those people were bad. We’ll take you two to good people, who’ll give you food and a warm bed and homes to stay in forever.”

“Mum’s with bad people?”

Oh Fenris, the girl was smart for how young she was. “Yes.” I reached out a paw and drew her back just as she turned to walk out of the alley. “You’re not going anywhere, young lady. I’ll get those bad people and maybe even save your mum. But you have to stay here and grow strong and help take care of your littermate.”

She nestled against me, and the little white pup. “The others were on top of us. We couldn’t breathe. It was dark. I kept them off him.”

I would bite those filthy humans. “You’re a wolf among dogs,” I said to her. “Both of you were strong enough to stay alive. You will both have good homes soon, and good people.”

The white pup stirred. “’ungry.”

“Get ‘im here, then,” Meg said from her crate. “Bast, that thing eats like me whole litter. Good thing you’re ace at scavenging, three-legs.” In the two days and nights we’d all been here I’d provided another fish and half a carton of spicy lamb from the skip I’d wrestled open with my nose and one foreleg; Meg herself was filling out as well as the kittens and pups.

Much as I wanted to pick him up and put him in the crate I let the pup totter to his feet and wobble over to the cat on his own, giving him only a nudge or two with my nose. “Mum,” he murmured before latching on to the cat’s teat.

"It’s Meg, you little brat, I’m not your mum! Meg!” Meg flopped again as the pup butted her belly in his eagerness to feed. “This kid.”

“Meg,” the girl said when she walked over to feed.

“You’re not lying to the brats, are you, dog?” Meg peered at me from her lying position where the youngsters nursed once again.

“No. Shock knows every cat around here, and most of the dogs too it seems. He also knows the building where the strays go in to get new homes. We’ll take them there when Shock sends for me.”

“You know about the stray building, but you don’t go in yourself?”

“I’m no stray,” I snapped. “My owner is in the human hospital – he got hurt by the same thing that took off my leg. When he’s better he’ll look for me, and I’ll go back to him.”

Meg yawned halfway through my speech. “I liked your wolf stories better, three-legs. I was a pet once. Then one day they were gone, all of them. I got out through a window and I’ve been roaming ever since. I think your people went away and left you, like me.”

The retort I wanted to make to Meg was cut off by a great caterwauling of various other street cats, and a few dogs as well. Meg called out in the same way. “Come back, Army dog,” she said, “Come back, Army dog. Leave the pups and come.” Then she shook herself. “Shock.”

Back to the alley, without the puppies?

“If I know Shock he’ll be back in a day to get these two. They still need some feeding up.” Meg grimaced as the girl butted her too.

I leaned over, scratched nose or no scratched nose. “Wolf Girl. I have to go. But I will be back. I WILL be back. Meg will feed both of you. I will be back.”

She looked up at me for a moment. “You will be back.”

“I swear by Fenris your true father,” I said. “I will be back.”

**Author's Note:**

> Sequel to the last time I had this prompt in July 27, 2012, [Left Holding the Bag](http://archiveofourown.org/works/489320)


End file.
